Alert communication systems currently in use at hospitals and other healthcare facilities are essentially local telephone systems for use by a hospital administrator in making telephone-like calls to healthcare providers within the facility concerning the healthcare needs of a patient. The system typically includes a stationary telephonic device for use by the healthcare administrator, who has the responsibility of responding to a patient's request for assistance. Normally, the patient can contact the healthcare administrator by using a communication device located at the patient's bedside, with the communication device telephonically connected to the administrator's telephonic device. During the ensuing oral communication between the patient and hospital administrator, the administrator can ascertain, for example, what level-of-care the patient needs, in terms of what type of care the patient needs and whether that care is needed immediately, as soon as practical or somewhere in between.
Once the healthcare administrator has determined the nature of the patient's request, and its urgency, the administrator can use the stationary telephonic device to call, for example, the patient's nurse by dialing the telephone phone number that is associated with a mobile telephonic device, ostensibly carried by the nurse. The nurse's telephonic device alerts the nurse of the call by sounding an audible ring tone. If the nurse answers the call, the two parties can discuss the healthcare needs of the patient and determine if the nurse can timely respond to the patient's needs. In many instances, however, the healthcare administrator's call occurs while the nurse is currently attending to the needs of another patient. This circumstance creates a serious dilemma for the nurse. Should the nurse simply ignore the call and continue attending to the needs of the patient or should the nurse stop providing care and engage in a conversation with the healthcare administrator to find out what are the needs of the other patient who is requesting assistance. If the nurse decides to ignore the call from the healthcare administrator, the nurse is potentially putting the healthcare needs of the current patient above the needs of the other patient asking for help, without knowing what that other patient's healthcare needs are. And, the ringing telephonic device, even if it is turned off after a few rings, can be disruptive to the current patient, who may be sleeping or otherwise physiologically vulnerable to disruptions. The ringing telephonic device can also contribute to “alarm fatigue”, a well known psychological phenomena in hospitals in which nurses can become desensitized to all of the different alarms that can sound in a hospital environment, like beeping sounds from cardiac monitors, intravenous systems and patient controlled anesthesia pumps. As a result of this desensitization, there exists an increased likelihood that an important or critical emergency condition will go unnoticed by the nurse. In addition, after the telephonic device is turned off, the nurse must remember to turn it back on, lest he or she miss another potentially urgent call from the healthcare administrator. When the call is not answered, the healthcare administrator must decide whether to take the time to try calling the nurse back, hoping that the call will be answered. If the call is ultimately not answered, the healthcare administrator would then need to start calling other nurses until one of them answered the call, with each call increasing the delay in providing the patient with potentially urgently needed assistance.
On the other hand, if the nurse answers the call from the healthcare administrator, the nurse is, at least temporarily, giving the other patient's healthcare needs priority over his or her current patient, again without knowing what the other patient's healthcare needs are. Further, the decision to take time to answer the call and talk to the administrator can potentially cause a disruption to the intimate relationship between the current patient and nurse due to the appearance, real or not, that the current patient is not as important to the nurse as the other patient. Since it is well known that an intimate relationship between patient and caregiver can provide the patient with, at least, a therapeutic sense of wellbeing and may even contribute to a more favorable outcome for the patient, any disruption in that relationship can be deleterious for the patient.
Another limitation of existing healthcare communication systems relates to the situation in which the healthcare administrator is attempting to contact a nurse who is in a hospital isolation room. Before entering an isolation room, the nurse must be gowned and gloved in order to maintain sterile conditions. Prior to being gowned, the nurse must either place the telephonic device in a pocket in the nurse's uniform or leave it outside the isolation room so that the device does not become a source of contamination. If the telephonic device is left outside of the isolation room and the hospital administrator places a call to the nurse's device, the nurse will not normally be able to leave the room to answer the call, assuming the call is audible, unless he or she is re-gowned after answering the call and before re-entering the isolation room. If the telephonic device is left in a pocket of the nurse's nurse uniform, the nurse will not be able to retrieve the device to answer a call without contaminating the isolation room. The practical effect of these two scenarios is that the nurse will, in all likelihood, not answer the hospital administrator's call for patient assistance, again leaving the administrator in a quandary of not knowing whether to keep trying or start calling another nurse.
Yet another limitation of existing healthcare communication systems is that the system administrators operate stationary telephonic devices in order to contact the healthcare providers. This feature constrains the system administrators to their station. As a result, if the administrator needs to leave the station temporarily, ideally he or she must make sure that someone else, who is competent to respond to patients' needs for assistance, is able to perform that function. If no one else is available, the administrator may have to leave the station uncovered and the potential needs of patients unmet.
In addition to the telephonic alert communication systems, the alert communication systems currently in use in hospitals and other healthcare facilities may include the feature using an audio loudspeaker system throughout the hospital to broadcast emergency alerts that are related to a life threatening condition being experienced by a patient. These alerts are usually referred to as Code Blue alerts or emergencies. When a Code Blue alert is broadcast, an audible voice announces “Code Blue” over the loudspeaker system and at the same time typically announces the general location of the patient who is experiencing the life threatening condition, such as “East Wing, Second Floor”. The precise location is not broadcast in order to comply with HIPPA privacy regulations and in order to avoid unnecessarily upsetting the patient or patient's family who may be in the hospital visiting. Rather, as soon as the Code Blue alert is issued, a hospital staff member has the responsibility to proceed to the elevators providing access to the floor, and as healthcare providers, who are responding to the Code Blue alert, exit the elevators, the staff member verbally informs them of the patient's location.
Although the Code Blue broadcast system is generally effective in marshalling the healthcare providers who may be needed to save the patient's life, the system has several imitations that impact how quickly the patient receives the urgently needed assistance. In addition to broadcasting a loud alarm, another limitation is that healthcare providers cannot respond if they in are in a part of the hospital facility where there is no loudspeaker. Another limitation is that directions to the precise location of the patient must be provided by a staff member, who may be delayed in responding or may not respond due to a failure to hear the alert. This will of necessity cause a delay in being able to treat the patient; potentially loosing valuable time that could cause the patient to lose his or her life.
In addition to a hospital broadcasting alerts related to a patient's life threatening condition, educational facilities, like grade schools, high schools and colleges, must at times warn teachers and students of a potentially life threatening emergency. The situation is all too familiar today in which an armed intruder enters a school with the intent to kill or harm students and teachers and then starts shooting them at random. Most schools have a public address system that could be used by school administrators to issue an alert of the emergency and to verbally announce the emergency measures that should be taken by teachers and students. Unfortunately, however, it is often the case that the school administrator may not learn of the emergency until a substantial amount of harm has been inflicted on the teachers and students. Furthermore, a broadcast of the potential threat to the entire school population may create an unnecessary panic among students, impairing the ability of teachers to implement procedures to protect the students.
The portable alert communication system described below overcomes these and other limitations in existing healthcare and educational alert communication systems.